


A Diamond in the Rough

by Inkribbon796



Series: Masks and Maladies [105]
Category: Jacksepticeye Fandom, Markiplier fandom - Fandom, Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Abusive Derek, Child Abuse, Eric needs therapy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Murder, Past Child Abuse, Randall tries to be a good friend, Slight child endangerment, Suphero AU, and he needs it bad, by all parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27816082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inkribbon796/pseuds/Inkribbon796
Summary: Eric has always felt like he was a bad luck magnet, but his life gets a whole lot unluckier the day his father brings him to work one day.
Series: Masks and Maladies [105]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1538131
Comments: 28
Kudos: 20





	1. Bad Luck Eric

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING for child abuse, both verbal and physical, and for murder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eric in this is 14. Illinois who makes a brief cameo is 17. This is probably one of the last three origin stories. After this is Yancy’s first arrest and then the Host’s that’ll be out probably February.

~::~ 6 Years Ago ~::~

Eric was almost the middle child of sixteen kids in his family, child number seven in the line up. So he was used to many things: getting picked on by his older siblings, getting ignored by his parents — especially his father — and having to be quick at the dinner table even though he was never quick enough to get any of the well made food.

His mother at least tried, but with sixteen kids someone was bound to fall through the cracks.

As Eric found out, being the almost middle child was nowhere near as bad as when his _“bad luck”_ started coming in, starting small by killing his pets first. Or when his mother died. When his girlfriend died. Then in the final strike was when his brothers all died and he lost his legs.

His father stopped ignoring him, and Eric learned how awful things could really have been. Because Eric was never going to be his father’s perfect son, but Derek Junior was gone and there was nothing either of them could do about it.

Today was already shaping up to be a bad day, Derek had woken up pissed and hungover and had taken it out on Eric, and now the young teen was supposed to go down to the warehouse with his father when all he wanted to do was curl up under his sheets with his little blanket scrap and cry until he felt something other than pain and grief.

But he forced his shoddy prosthetics to cooperate and got into the back of his dad’s car, not looking up and not touching anything.

“Okay, so this is a big day, Eric, I need you _not_ to fuck this up,” Derek glanced at his son through the rear view mirror, glaring at him as if his eyes were made of hellfire.

And to Eric they might as well have been.

“Word yesterday was that Dark might be dropping by, and so help me if you piss him off.”

“I-I-I’ll be,” Eric already felt the tears starting, “be good, I-I . . . pr-omise, Sir.”

His last word was so painful that he almost swallowed it.

“You better not touch anything unless I tell you to, or I’ll kick your ass,” Derek threatened venomously.

Thankfully Derek wasn’t expecting an actual answer so Eric mercifully sat in silence in the back, trying desperately not to let his dad hear him crying and keep his eyes dry.

Derek glared at him when he limped out of the car. He glanced over to see a small group of people next to the entrance of the warehouse. There was a young man in a tweed suit and a dark brown fedora in his hand. He was directing some crate into another warehouse and Derek just watched him.

The kid barely looked old enough to drive, let alone be a captain, but it was obvious that people who were voicing any complaints were promptly shut up. Derek didn’t want to be one of the dissenters.

Rumors had been spreading for years, Wil had been seen in his studio with small kids. There was occasionally a kid or two around Dark.

Added to the fact that Derek was pretty sure that the teenager — because he _had_ to be — was one of Dark’s _“personal assistants”_ which half the network knew those kids were related _somehow_ to Dark.

Everyone chalked it up to Wil.

The kid led the group with the crate into a separate warehouse and the instant Derek could move, he did and left Eric to scramble after him.

Derek only seemed to get more frustrated as the day went on, and Eric was so exhausted and frustrated himself but instead of being angry like Derek he just got sadder.

And then the other shoe dropped when Dark strolled in through a portal, right next to Eric.

The young man jumped and dropped the box he was holding, hearing whatever was inside of it crashing and breaking inside the box.

Eric flinched, knowing that a slap or punch from Dark would hurt ten times as much as his father’s.

It didn’t come . . . yet . . .

What did come was a scarily calm tone, “What was in the box?”

Eric felt sheer terror choke up his throat, he was too scared to open his mouth or look up past Dark’s elbows. He’d never met the demon before and his whole body locked up.

Dark was patiently waiting, much calmer and even temper then he would be if a grown adult had broken his things in front of him.

Contrary to what Dark had been desperate to keep secret, he was developing a soft spot for human children. And he considered this obvious Derekson child — one he’d never seen before — counted as one.

Dark would have to do something about that at some point, make sure people didn’t question his ruthlessness.

Eric was still shaking in fear, terrified about how long Dark had gone unanswered, he tried to open his mouth but no words came out.

“Boy!” Derek called out and Eric thought he might cry. “I am so sorry, Sir.”

Dark held up a hand, Derek freezing in his tracks, he kept looking at Eric and asked, “What was in the box?”

“It might—” Derek started.

“If I wanted an answer from _you_ I would have asked you,” Dark snapped aggressively at Derek. And out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eric flinching, his arms coming up to protect himself.

Dark saw it and he saw red, thinking of three little boys that had come into his care with varying levels of fear and anger. Of Kay who cried and was afraid of being separated and would only nap under Dark’s desk. Of Arthur who was so angry he couldn’t communicate with other people without getting easily frustrated. Of Illinois who would cling to him and still expected to be pushed away.

They all had flinched like that when Dark had moved wrong. While they didn’t so much anymore every once in a while Kay would freeze up and shut his eyes for a second or two.

And suddenly that box was the least important thing in the room.

Eric covered his ears as Dark’s ringing got shrill in volume, hunching himself over, whimpering in fear.

“Is this one of yours?” Dark asked, knowing that Derek had _a lot_ of children and he was going to need to look into that.

“Yes, but—” Derek answered.

Dark planned on torturing Derek, on taking great pains to correct what he saw as a personal insult against Dark himself. But the mounting rage from his twin souls got the better of him and the faces of his own children flashed in his mind.

An axe suddenly appeared in Dark’s hand and then it was buried in Derek’s chest who was woefully unprepared to die.

The entity kept swinging at Derek, the man’s screams quickly dying out to a gurgle and then nothing as Dark kept swinging. His echoes were screaming and breathing curses at the dead man.

It was only until Derek was nothing but a chilling corpse on the ground, his chest nothing but jelly did Dark remember there had been someone else nearby but when he looked back at where Eric had been, the boy was gone.

Dark dragged his hand across his face, realizing that he was just spattered with blood.

He needed to find that kid, Dark had drilled into his network the danger of witnesses, and . . .

His blue soul was . . . concerned about him. Dark would be fighting against Damien not to adopt the boy on sight.

_“Don’t be an idiot, we just killed his father,”_ Celine snapped. _“We don’t need another one to hate us.”_

Which was a statement Damien was rather crestfallen by. _“We asked for six initially. Bim wouldn’t be the youngest anymore.”_

_No!_

_“No!”_

Dark and Celine both told him.

With Damien pouting, Dark used and portal and dumped the body into the middle of the ocean. Then ordered the closest of his workers to clean up the mess, threatening to have them killed next as he called Illinois to tell him a new warehouse was temporarily under his control until he could find someone else.

He had a child to track down.


	2. Eric’s Lament

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To follow up a terrible day, Eric tries to get help and finds more bad luck but, perhaps, some good luck along the way.

Eric’s chest was burning.

He didn’t know what compelled him to run, and he was surprised he didn’t do a faceplant immediately and get killed by Dark on the spot. But he was down a couple blocks before his legs threatened to give out and he had to find somewhere to hide and rest.

His rare act of bravery costing his body almost everything.

He hunkered behind a trash can and just started bawling. Eric began crying for everything that had happened to him in the last couple years. His father was awful but he had kept him off the streets, and now what was he going to do?

His luck just kept getting worse. There didn’t seem to be anyway to stop it.

Eric didn’t know how long he sat there crying but it was enough to help his legs feel less like death. Maybe he could go home and hide there for a bit.

But knowing his luck, Dark would be there waiting for him.

So Eric pulled himself up and curled his arms around himself . . . and slowly he started limping towards his street.  
  


Randall was having a relatively good day. It was a weekend and he had a couple friends over. One of his friends Ethan was over with a couple other friends.

Then the doorbell rang and Randall’s mother went to go and answer it. He thought nothing of it until his mother made an audible gasp.

“Ray, get a change of clothes, now!” His mom yelled.

Rolling his eyes he got up and saw one of his friends standing there, shivering and looking as if he’d been bawling his eyes out. He was spattered with blood and shaking.

“C-Can,” Eric struggled to say, not looking at anyone, he was shaking and a choked sob escaped his throat, “ _ uh, _ I . . .”

Randall raced for his bedroom as Ethan and the other guys looked at him in concern, especially Ethan. He raced back in with the change of clothes and tried to make himself look as non-threatening as possible. “Hey Eric, yah wanna come in?”

Eric’s eyes widened in fear and he hiccuped a bit with how ragged his breathing suddenly got. “Nuh, no,” Eric sobbed.

He tripped and tried to grab onto the door frame, something like a small explosion rippled along his palm and fingertips where it came into contact with the doorframe. He screamed, and fell backwards, hitting the back of head to the wooden porch and was out.

Randall and his mother predictably started freaking out, Ethan had been leaning to the side so he barely caught the small explosion and immediately was calling Silver.

“I’m a block from my place, get over here,” Ethan said into his phone and raced for the front door. “What happened?”

“I dunno,” Randall told him and they slowly moved Eric inside, his mother calling the ambulance. “He just exploded.”

Eric due to exhaustion, and partially with shock at what had happened in front of him, was slow to wake up. Randall and the others tried to keep him warm and the ambulance quickly took him away when it arrived, Silver waiting in the ambulance for them as he spoke with Ethan over the phone.

All he knew was that someone with powers had turned up covered in blood and he was a friend of a friend of Ethan’s.

The young teen woke up in the ambulance, confused and clearly dazed. The first thing he did was start panicking and had to immediately be sedated before he could blow up the ambulance. It was something that Silver felt more than a bit guilty about since this was a kid and he was obviously not doing even remotely well in any way.

Marvin came in to magically ward the hospital bed and it was determined that apart from minor dehydration and nutrition problems, the kid was fine.

The blood was going into testing but since there were no apparent wounds on the young teen’s body it was assumed the blood was not his.

Eric woke up a little cleaner and with Randall in the room. He felt so disoriented and afraid that he just started crying.

“Hey, Eric, man,” Randall scooted over a bit, moving slowly but making sure Eric saw him. “Yer okay, yer safe.”

“My hands,” Eric realized his hands were shaking.

“They hurtin’?” Randall asked.

Eric only answered with a little distraught whimper.

“I can call the docs in, they can make the pain go away,” Randall promised.

A knock came at the door and Eric jumped, balling up his fists and holding them against his chest and his breathing becoming a bit more erratic and panicked.

Slowly Patton walked in, wearing his hero’s costume, the puppy dog half mask making his face look a bit more rounder and his smile softer. “Hello you two, my name is Captain Morality, I just wanted to make sure everything was alright.”

Unseen by both teens Patton’s aura was spreading through the room, slowly trying to coax Eric into calming down, but not too fast where it would cause Eric to fly into another panicked state.

“Hey,” Randall greeted but Eric was still coiled up a bit. But his breathing was calming down and his hands weren’t balled quite so tightly.

Patton stayed by the door, not wanting to intrude into either of the teen’s much deserved and necessary personal space. “What are your names?”

“My name’s Randall,” Randall answered quickly. Because he’d been only worried about Eric and not dealing with the flagship full of quickly building problems mental, physical, and emotional.

“Mmmnnhh,” Eric asked, not looking at Patton, ducking his head fearfully.

Instinctively Patton briefly frowned sadly, wanting nothing more than to walk over and reassure the teen that everything was alright and that Patton was here to help and they could play fun games and watch anything he wanted.

But Patton didn’t know these teens, and Patton had made the mistake of assuming he knew what they needed. There would be times for games and comfort food later.

“It’s okay,” Patton tried to souls as unbothered as possible, hoping that eventually the teen would calm down enough to talk a bit. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. I’m actually here to talk to your friend.”

“Me?” Randall asked in confusion, pointing to himself. “Why?”

“I just want to know what happened and you were both there,” Patton reminded gently.

“Well, I was hangin’ out with a couple ‘a my friends,” Randall remembered, pointing to Eric after he’d said that. “An’ Eric showed up, he was hurt. Then you all showed up.”

“Eric, that’s a nice name,” Patton smiled warmly. “Do you two have any siblings?”

And unbeknownst to Patton, that was one of the worst questions to ask the teen. It was meant to be a simple  _ yes _ or  _ no _ question, but to Eric it was so much more than that. It was a crashing sound. The sound of metal on metal. Of pain and screams that slowly were silenced as he was forced to do nothing but listen and watch.

Eric started bawling, curling around himself.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” Patton apologized. “Is there someone I can call for you?”

Randall looked uneasy. “Eric, is your dad still at work?”

Patton immediately felt a little bit of relief, that they could figure out what happened from Eric’s loving, caring—

__ _ Oh no, he’s crying again! _ Patton started worrying.

Eric was halfway into the semi-distance trauma over his brothers dying, and going into the very recent memory of Dark murdering his father with an axe.

“He,” Eric stalled, feeling like there was a weight in his throat.

Patton waited patiently, silently, not wanting the boy to feel pressured or forced into talking.


	3. A Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which Eric gets some much needed protection and Damien attempts another surprise adoption.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A story in which Damien and Patton share the same brain cell, and it says to adopt the sad child.

Eventually Eric was able to tell a little bit of what had happened. Dark had killed his father in front of him, and he was scared and his hands wouldn’t stop aching and tingling. Randall’s mother came in to help try and calm him down. Patton did pass on the message to the other heroes before going back inside and using his powers to help calm Eric down again. It resulted in him falling asleep from exhaustion.

Logan wound up calling in with information, after looking through several police reports they found out that Eric was the survivor of an accident that killed his brother and that Derek was suspected of working for Dark but the police hadn’t been able to prove it.

Currently the only thing the doctors could prove was that while Eric didn’t have evidence of being stabbed, he had a lot of old and recent bruises. And that was making Patton overprotective and unhappy, wanting to coddle and smother Eric in love but was unable to for a multitude of reasons.

Logan was standing in his outfit, trying to _“reason with him”_ while the two were in the lobby. “We cannot adopt him, he is a teenager and most likely has extended family, he is a witness in a murder investigation.”

“Yeah, but he’s so sad,” Patton smiled and tried to continue to argue his point.

“Marie Curie and her notebook,” Logan groaned. “This is why we don’t let you be around children.”

“Princey wants and sidekick and Silver and Jackie both have one,” Patton gave a huge smile.

“No,” Logan cut in to stomp that out. “No. No! We are not taking on an apprentice. I can barely corral you and Princey, I am not adding a literal child to those complications.”

“Aww, come on, it’d be great,” Patton continued.

“No, I am figuratively putting my foot down,” Logan said and distantly he heard the faint ringing of Dark’s aura and signaled an alarm. “Dark is here, we’ll continue this at a later time.”

The two Sides followed the staticky, ringing aura until they found Dark outside of Eric’s room.

“Halt!” Logan ordered him. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

_“A surprise adoption,”_ Dark’s blue soul answered, not-so-helpfully, despite the heroes not being able to hear him or him being able to talk to them.

_“Don’t start!”_ Dark’s red soul pushed him out of the way.

“That’s none of your business,” Dark managed to say despite the fact his twin souls were fighting with each other, his form splintering and fracturing. Which gave an unintended nefarious air to his words.

“You’re here to kill him aren’t you?” Patton accused.

“Of course not,” Dark told him in a rare moment of honesty. He didn’t want to kill the young Derekson boy; he wanted to add him to what Anti often referred to as Dark’s _“hoard”._

Dark’s blue soul was quickly winning out and Dark knew he was losing against the impulse to take the Derekson kid and just run off with him. He was already planning on introducing him to Illinois and Kay first, Bim and Arthur were a bit too high energy for a first introduction.

“You can’t have him, you fiend,” Patton proclaimed loudly and bravely.

“You really are insufferable,” Dark told him.

Silver flew down the other side of the hallway, braced for a fight.

“Why are you looking for a kid?” Silver demanded.

“You should mind your own business,” Dark scoffed.

“Not in the job description,” Silver smiled, pulling up his fists. “Let’s dance, Darkcus.”

Dark scowled at him, looking about ready to literally hiss at him and he jumped at him, his aura curling around him.

“I’ll get him out, you make sure people are safe,” Silver called at the two Sides who were already going towards Eric’s door. Patton rushed in to find Randall’s mother not in the room.

“Where should we move them?” Patton asked as Logan closed the door, the quick entrance and the loud conversation had woken both Randall and Eric up, Eric easily getting disoriented at the unfamiliar scenario.

“No, while he’s still out there it is unsafe for anyone to move,” Logan warned. “I’ve already contacted the hospital staff to help Ms. Voorhees to get up here safely when Dark is removed from the floor.”

“What’s goin’ on here?” Randall demanded groggily.

“No, everything’s fine,” Patton promised, at the same moment that Silver came through the left wall, being thrown through by Dark.

Dark stepped through the hole, looked frustrated and very disgruntled, aura a shrill ringing.

Eric let out a squeak of terror and Randall huddled next to Eric.

“I’m not going to kill him,” Dark straightened his tie. “Killing a child is beneath me.”

“That doesn’t discount the numerous things that could happen to a child under your quote-unquote _care_ ,” Logan responded.

Dark let out a long sigh, swiping the fringe of his hair to the side as a quick slew of memories of everything that his Lost Ones had done while they’d been living in the Manor. He waved his hand and a large portal opened up and dropped all of them, along with everything in the room, into a currently unused construction site. One that Marvin was currently not at because he was still at the hospital currently ten miles away.

“There, now that pesky magician isn’t in the way,” Dark growled, cracking his neck in agitation, flattening out the already pristine front of his suit coat. “I really should get around to killing him one of these days.”

Eric looked around wildly, his IV and monitor was no longer hooked up and the young teen started to slip into a panic.

Silver was already moving, “I’ve got—”

Dark had already grabbed him, his aura had a crushing grip on the monochrome hero’s ankle, tugging him back, “Go away!”

The hero was flung up towards the half finished ceiling and because Silver was super sturdy and already moving quickly a couple pieces of rebar came loose, chunks of concrete still and started tipping over.

For all the adults, things were moving in slow motion and Dark let go of Silver to try and reach out in time with a portal but only half of it fell in and but because of its positioning a piece of concrete broke off from where the rebar hit the portal and fell right on top of the teens.

It hit Randall square on the back, Dark let out a horrified gasp that fortunately for Dark’s reputation — but not his nerves — Patton’s equally horrified gasp was much louder and he was closer to Logan so the other Side didn’t hear Dark.

For the heroes’ sakes, and for Eric’s as well, when it hit Randall it activated a superpower in him and the concrete just fell apart like it was made of flimsy plaster. All the heroes just froze, Dark felt a chill of relief come over him and he held a portal over the teens to keep any more debris from falling over on top of them. Randall felt like his whole body was on pins and needles.

His only thought was: _“Never before have I been so happy to see superpowers.”_

All it looked like to the heroes was that Dark was planning something. Silver flew at him and slammed into Dark as Logan and Patton raced for the two teens, hurrying to. Pull them away from the site as Jackie and Marvin rushed in. They stayed in-between Dark, and Eric and Randall.

Dark snarled at him, “Fine! Pests, the lot of you! I did that boy a favor!”

Then there was a flash of a portal and Dark was gone. All the heroes stayed braced for an attack. When it didn’t come after a couple minutes, Silver and Jackie rushed to take the teens back to the hospital where the staff and Randall’s mother were very anxiously waiting for them.

Without any other physical wounds to treat, and confirmation that Dark was his father’s killer. The police got what scarce information they could.

Then Marvin was left to talk to Eric, and it took a little bit before the very skittish teen warmed up enough to him to even look at him.

Marvin smiled, “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna let anythin’ happen ta yah.”

Eric managed a small, sad smile, trying to hope that maybe they were right.

That maybe, just maybe his luck was finally turning around.

After Eric was deemed healthy enough to leave the heroes decided that for safety’s sake and security they could keep Eric living at the base, he wasn’t the only person living there. He would repeatedly meet with social services and a doctor as a follow up for health and wellness checks until they could find any other family. Randall’s mother offered to take him in if they couldn’t. But it was determined that until Dark stopped hunting for him, he would stay at the base and learn to control his explosive powers.

Silver even offered to help teach Randall to control his super strength, and with very tentative permission from his mother, training dates were set.

Immediately upon bringing Eric to the base, Bing and Logan took one look at the prosthetics he had, then they both looked at each other. Logan’s eyebrow was raised and Bing took off his glasses to take pictures of it.

“Who has been letting the little dude use these?” Bing commented.

“How soon could we procure replacements?” Logan asked.

“Procure nuthin’,” Bing boasted. “I could build better.”

“Maybe others could also be made in the process,” Logan proposed. “The holidays are coming up.”

“I like how yah think,” Bing smiled, putting his sunglasses back on. “Let me just get some measurements from the little dude, yah think he would like some rocket shoes?”

“How about we do not include such modifications?” Logan told him as they went to go and find Eric to get some leg measurements. It would take Bing a week to make some custom prosthetics for Eric. Some nanites embedded into it to help it react to whatever terrain or environments he was in.

Upon receiving them, Eric would burst into tears, almost too afraid to touch them for fear of breaking them but after an impromptu stress test where Bing demonstrated that short of an atomizer he couldn’t possibly break the new prosthetics, Eric took them and put them on.

Eric took some time getting used to his new prosthetics, but found that like his new life he would grow into it quite nicely.


End file.
